Image Comics Exclusives & Signings SDCC 2016

Image Comics was formed by Marvel’s top artists frustrated with their work for hire policies at the time. In 1992 Jim Lee, Todd Mcfarlane, Whilce Portacio, Marc Silvestri,     Erik Larsen,  Jim Valentino and Rob Liefeld left their high-profile books at Marvel to form a comic company dedicated to creators owning 100% of their rights to their creations.

Image went through some highs and lows, with creators, sales and even partners over the years. In the past five years or so though Image has been putting out many quality titles. Their sales have risen significantly in single issues and trades. With Image’s sales and popularity growing many of Marvel and  DC’s creators have left to pursue their ideas at Image.

Here is a list of exclusives and high profile creators Image is bringing with them to SDCC.

SDCC Variants Sold At The Image Booth #2729 (Limited Quantities)

Paper Girls Book Plate with art by Cliff Chiang (free with purchase of Paper Girls, Vol. 1 at the booth)

Snotgril #1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung, $10

Monstress Vol.1  hardcover by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda, $40

Throwaways #1 by Caitlin Kittredge & Steven Sanders, cover art by Roberta Ingranata, $10

Convention Exclusives:

Toyko Ghost, Vol. 1 Convention hardcover by Rick Remender & Sean Gordon Murphy, $35

Sex Criminals Vol.3 convention hardcover by Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky, $35

Complete Signing Schedule:

Wednesday, July 20th

Charlie Adlard, 6 – 6:45 PM

Thursday, July 21st

Joshua Williamson & Adam Guzowski, 10 – 10:45 AM
Sina Grace: 11 – 11:45 AM
Kyle Higgins: 12 – 12:45 PM
Brandon Thomas & Juan Gedeon: 12 – 12:45 PM
Keenan Marshall Keller & Tom Neely/Brian Schirmer & Jeremy Saliba 1 – 1:45 PM
Jason Aaron & Jason Latour: 1 – 1:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Terry Dodson: 2 – 2:45 PM
Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung: 3 – 3:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Charlie Adlard: 3 – 3:45 PM
Brenden Fletcher & Babs Tarr: 4 – 4:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Brian Haberlin: 4 – 4:45 PM
Meredith McClaren: 5 – 5:45 PM
Otis Frampton: 5 – 5:45 PM

Friday, July 22nd

Jim Zub: 10 – 10:45 AM
Joe Harris: 10 – 10:45 AM
Cliff Chiang & Jared Fletcher: 11 – 11:45 AM
Nicola Scott: 11 – 11:45 AM
Caitlin Kittredge: 12 – 12:45 PM
Charlie Adlard: 12 – 12:45 PM
Rick Remender: 1 – 1:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Joshua Williamson: 1 – 1:45 PM
Man of Action Group: Steven T. Seagle, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, and Duncan Rouleau: 1 – 1:45 PM
Steven T. Seagle & Jason Katzenstein: 1:45 – 2:30 PM
Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda: 2 – 2:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung: 3 – 3:45 PM (ticketed, 3item limit)
Spawn Kills Everyone: J.J. Kirby, Liana Hee: 3 – 3:45 PM (signing 100 limited edition Spawn Kills Everyone posters featuring the art of all three SKE covers)
Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie: 4 – 4:45 p.m. (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Ed Brubaker: 4 – 4:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Andy Belanger & Becky Cloonan: 5 – 5:45 PM
Emi Lenox: 5 – 5:45 PM
Max Landis: 5 – 5:45 PM (ticketed, 3-item limit)
Robert Kirkman: 6 – 7 PM (ticketed)

Saturday, July 23rd 

Scott Snyder & Jock: 10 – 10:45 AM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Caitlin Kittredge: 10 – 10:45 AM
Ed Brubaker: 11 – 11:45 AM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie: 11 – 11:45 AM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Chris Dingess: 11 – 11:45 AM
Tula Lotay: 12 – 12:45 PM
Dustin Nguyen: 12 – 12:45 PM
Man of Action Group: Steven T. Seagle, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, and Duncan Rouleau: 1 – 1:45 PM
Jason Latour & Jason Aaron: 1 – 1:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Brian Buccellato: 2 – 2:45 PM
Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda: 2 – 2:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Brandon Thomas & Juan Gedeon: 2 – 2:45 PM
Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung: 3 – 3:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Matt Fraction: 3 – 3:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Nick Spencer: 4 – 4:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Rick Remender: 4 – 4:45 PM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Shawn Martinbrough: 4 – 4:45 PM
Emi Lenox: 5 – 5:45 PM
Kyle Starks: 5 – 5:45 PM

Sunday, July 24th

Howard Chaykin: 10 – 10:45 AM
Brenden Fletcher: 11 – 11:45 AM (ticketed, 3 item limit)
Cliff Chiang & Jared Fletcher: 12 – 12:45 AM
Ivan Brandon: 2 – 2:45 AM
Bryan Lee O’Malley & Leslie Hung: 3 – 3:45 AM (ticketed, 3 item limit)

As always for all you’re SDCC news and announcements keep checking in at Skatronixxx.com/@Skatronixxx.

Interview with ComixTribe Co-Creator Tyler James

Here at Skatronixxx.com we are passionate about independent/creator-owned comic books as well as their creators and publishers. When we get the opportunity, we love to shine the spotlight on them.

Tyler James is a comic writer, publisher, game designer/producer and teacher from Newburyport,  Massachusetts U.S.A.

What inspired you to create comic books

Matt, my mother, will tell you that her biggest fear when I was a kid was how heartbroken I’d be when I learned I couldn’t actually be a superhero when I grew up.

I’d come home from pre-school every day with a brand new Batman utility belt made with scissors, glue, tape, and construction paper.

So, superhero comics definitely pulled me into the medium, and it wasn’t long before I wasn’t only reading the books, but throwing tracing paper over Spider-man and “drawing” him myself.

I credit the Image explosion of the early 90’s with triggering the “aha moment” realisation that these characters weren’t something that “always existed” but rather were created by actual human beings. Being there from the very beginning of the Image universe definitely had a major impact on me.

It wasn’t long after that that I decided I didn’t want to draw Spider-man as much as I wanted to create my own characters and tell my own stories.

When you decided that wanted to create your own stories what was your biggest challenge or obstacle?

When first starting out, and this was early 90’s so virtually a lifetime ago… I really didn’t have any challenges or obstacles.

I had paper and pencils and a copy of How to Make Comics the Marvel Way by Stan and John, and I was off to the races.

In that regard, I was lucky… when you’re a kid, you don’t really care that there’s so much you don’t know that you don’t know… you just go.

Of course, there were no internet resources, comic cons weren’t a thing I knew about, and my local comic shops were more places of commerce than true communities… so I did things wrong and would later have to unlearn a lot of bad habits.

What do you mean comics aren’t drawn on plain printer paper?

Why would I script out pages in advance rather than draw them one page at a time?

How else would I letter my pages but to draw in the word balloons and letter by hand?

That said, I’m incredibly grateful that I started logging my 10,000 hours at a very young age.

What is the origin story of comix tribe?

Flash forward twenty years or so, and I started working on more and more collaborative projects. After about a dozen years of working on comics entirely as a solo act, I realised that I’d never be able to create all the comics I’d wanted to bring into the world alone.

At that time, I started becoming increasingly obsessed with the craft of making comics and started writing some articles on craft and creating over at ComicRelated and on my own blog.

Eventually, I started working with editor Steven Forbes, who was also writing great how-to content. I hired him to edit a book I was working on… he tore it to shreds. We’ve been friends ever since.

Because I was working on books with other creators, publishing under “Tyler James Comics” didn’t seem like a very compelling option.

So, Steve and I conceived of a site called ComixTribe, which could act as both a resource of articles for comic creators and a publishing imprint for our future books.

ComixTribe.com opened its doors on 1-1-2011.

Having had quite a few successful Kickstarter campaigns, how has Kickstarter changed Comix Tribe?

ComixTribe has been bootstrapped from the ground up. Steven and I were big on ideas and short on cash to invest into ComixTribe.

Cash is oxygen to a business… without it, a business suffocates.

With it… well, you have options.

In 2012, we launched our first successful Kickstarter and in one month raised $26,000 on Kickstarter.

After Kickstarter took its fees, that still meant that more than $23,000 hit the ComixTribe business bank account.

To put that in perspective, that was more funding in one month than I had made in the previous 12 years creating comics, selling them at shows and online, etc. combined!

That infusion of cash helped us not only fund the production of a hardcover graphic novel that the direct market alone could not have supported, but it helped finance print runs for other series, marketing, and other publishing investments.

You can draw a straight line from that first Kickstarter to where we are today… it’s not wrong to say Kickstarter was a game changer for us.

It also continues to be a major part of our overall publishing strategy.

The reality is this… there is no path to victory for a small, bootstrapped, independent publisher selling only $3 comic books through the direct market. None. The numbers don’t work.

But when you’re able to put a system in place that combines Kickstarter, the direct market, conventions, Amazon, and digital sales… those numbers become a little easier to make work…

And then once you start piling upon additional revenue sources such as foreign licensing and media options… they start to get rosier.

And the truth is, success in one area often leads to increased success in other areas…

But you need to get the snowball rolling somehow, and in 2016, I have no doubt that the best platform to get that snowball rolling is Kickstarter.

Many readers are frustrated with the way Marvel and DC have handled their respective universes. Do you see independent/creator-owned comics popularity and sales coming close or equal to Marvel and DC’s in the next five year’s or so?

In the direct market (i.e., Comic Book Shops), no. No chance of that happening. But that’s a pretty narrow view of the comic book industry, isn’t it? I mean, Raina Telgemeier latest graphic novel Ghosts is getting a 500,000 first print run that is more than 700 times what DC’s top selling graphic novel sold last month.

There are webcomics that are read by far more people than any direct market series.

In the direct market, though, you have a Diamond providing 95-99% of the comic product to shops, and Marvel and DC taking up 70-80% of their comic product offerings… that’s not going to change anytime soon.

The good news is that independent creators and publishers don’t need to compete with Marvel and DC to win.

Erica Moen isn’t competing with Marvel and DC. She’s winning.

Jason Brubaker isn’t competing with Marvel and DC. He’s winning.

Greg Pak is working for Marvel and DC… but also doing his own thing outside of the Big Two. He’s definitely winning.

Are there any books or Kickstarter campaigns in the works you can talk about for 2016 or possibly 2017?

Can, I talk about Kickstarter campaigns… oh, man, that’s a loaded question, Matt!

Well, first I’ve got to give a shoutout to two creators who took part in The ComixLaunch Course I taught earlier this year who just wrapped up successful Kickstarter campaigns. Michelle Palmer’s Meraki and Jim Whiting’s Margo: Intergalactic Trash Collector.

The great thing about teaching The ComixLaunch Course and hosting the ComixLaunch.com podcast is that even when I don’t have a project going… I feel like I’ve got an investment in the Kickstarter platform.

Some projects we have in the queue are hardcovers for CHUM and AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE, the next OXYMORON: Killing Time anthology, and THE RED TEN OMNIBUS.

And those are just the projects that we’re talking about publicly.

We are very wary of asking too much of our fan base, and we do try to space out our Kickstarter’s so they can get primary focus when it’s the book’s time to shine.

But you can be we’ll be on the platform again soon.

However, the absolute coolest thing going on right now is what’s happening with SINK, the new John Lees Alex Cormack series. Nearly 500 readers have “got in the van” already, and the early reaction has been phenomenal.

Thanks to Tyler for taking the time to talk with us! Follow him on Twitter @TylerJamesComic also follow @ComixTribe. Subscribe to Comixtribe’s email list http://www.comixtribe.com/subscribe and get five free digital comics!

Check out Tyler’s podcast on 50 creators sharing the #1 Kickstarter Tip  www.comixlaunch.com/50tips